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Philip Glass may be the most successful opera composer of our time; he’s certainly one of the most prolific. Best known for his large-scale works, he has also written more intimate pieces. Last night, Grimeborn, the Arcola’s annual festival of alternative opera, gave the UK premiere of The Sound of a Voice, written in 2003. The libretto is by David Henry Hwang, whose play M Butterfly explored sexual and political tensions between East and West.

Those tensions resurface here, to telling effect. Glass’s orchestra, directed by Tom Kelly, consists of cello, flutes (including Japanese shakuhachi) and pipa (Chinese lute). From such slender resources Glass conjures a seductive backdrop for vocal writing which strives for, and largely achieves, the kind of heightened speech that the very earliest opera composers sought.

The opera is in two parts, related but distinct, the twinned narratives unfolding with conversational ease. In the first, an ageing Japanese warrior finds himself drawn to a hermit woman who proves herself the stronger of the two, for which she pays a heavy price. In the second, an equally ageing writer goes to a strangely sexless brothel, where he enacts his own version of Yukio Mishima’s suicide, aided by the madam of the house.

Each half of the opera has just two roles, all four singers acting with conviction and no little subtlety, while Andrea Ferran’s production has a directness that is almost, but not quite, free of japonaiserie.

At times something more assertive might be welcome but Glass specifically did not want to write an opera house opera. There is no danger of that here. The Arcola is currently undergoing extensive refurbishment, so the performance unfolds in the Arcola Tent, the walls of which can’t keep Dalston at bay. As a result, trains, cars, sirens and helicopters all contribute to the musical experience.